Side observation: As a hazardous waste/environmental engineer based in the Midwest my remediation jobs take me from the Alleghenies to the Ozarks (through the arc of Greater Appalachia) – for some reason toxic sites are never found in posh urban...

"The Internet of Things" - where everything becomes alive and inanimate object are given mind and personality just like in a fantasy novel. Trees, rocks, weapons, etc. will come alive aand speak like in any sword and sorcery novel. Like...

I hope it works as advertised, but its hard to draw final conclusions from one test. Yet it does make intuitive sense that it is easier to alter the industrial carbon cycle than to try to stop it competely....

Mr. Stross - Your comments on the slowing down of Moore's Law and technology in general seems to dovetail with Horgan's "End of Science". Do you agree with him on the slowing or even halting of significant scientific advances?...

In response to Big Brother (and a host of Little Brothers) watching our every move and recording every word, won't technology allow the Common Man to turn the tables at watch the Watchers? This is fellow SF writer David' Brin's...

Brilliate essay on the coing technological changes. But won't our world be shaped more by demographic changes such as urbanization: http://www.who.int/gho/urban_health/situation_trends/urban_population_growth_text/en/ By 1990, less than 40% of the global population lived in a city, but as of 2010, more than...

As for CO2 emissions we can't stop the world from burning cheap, plentiful, useful and dirty coal. Even the Germans with their famous committment to solar energy are burning more coal than ever before. Whether its its burning coal or...

I admit to being a bit surprised to find that the Scots are more liberal than their English neighbors. It seems that people living in isolated mountain communities (Tea Partiers in Appalachia, Taliban in the Hindu Kush, Swiss Bankers in...

IIRC Lex Luthor's biggest complaint about Superman is that he made us lazy and dependent on him. Why bother to design and build a system to protect Earth from a massive asteroid impact when Superman can just fly up and...

And this is what Frank Herbert had to say about charismatic leaders: "The mistakes (of leaders) are amplified by the numbers who follow them without question. Charismatic leaders tend to build up followings, power structures and these power structures tend...

What your fellow SF writer the late Frank Herbert had to say about heroes: Don't give over all of your critical faculties to people in power, no matter how admirable those people may appear to be. Beneath the hero's facade...

Slums will save the planet. For the first time in history more people live in cities than in the country. By mid century over 85% of humanity will live in urban areas. Many of them in slums. And that is...

What will the other 90% do? Pan et circes. Automation and AI will destroy jobs for humans the same way cheap slavery destroyed the jobs of Roman citizens. The solution will be the same, feed and entertain the masses while...

"We can still manufacture stuff, it seems, but manufacturing no longer provides mass employment. And service jobs are rapidly being automated, as witness the spread of self-service checkouts and ATMs and lights-out warehouses." See http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/01/making-it-in-america/308844/ At one time, 90% of...

"I can't really see a German victory over the USSR in WWII happening." Quite the contrary, Hitler came within an ace of beating the Soviets in late 1941. Had the Wehrmach taken Moscow, the Soviet regime would have never survived...

You speak as if the Great War was somehow avoidable. Given the politics, demographics, diplomacy and economics of the era, the First World War was as inevitable as a landslide. Given the weapons of the time (barb wire, poison gas...

"Ignoring the PacRim sideshow" Compared to the Eastern Front, everything in WWI was a side show (Pacific, Burma, North Africa, Italy, D-Day, U-Boats, bomber campaign, etc.). Total tank losses in the single Battle of Kursk approached 6,800 (760 for the...

When Octavian defeated Anthony to become the sole ruler of Rome (and its first Emperor, taking the name of Augustus) he kept all the forms of the now dead Republic. The Senate still debated. The Magistrates still stood for election....

"The Germans eventually won, since the Soviets betrayed the Poles, but nobody would call it easy." Former USAF officer actually. To destroy resistance in a heavily built up urban area of 1.3 million inhabitants in only two months does count...

"The most relevant feature of counterinsurgency is that it never works." There is a very simple, effective and historical proven method of winning a counter-insurgency: You exterminate the local civilian population. The Assyrians exterminated whole tribes and kingdoms, often relocating...

BTW, her is an intersting article on the physics of actual space combat and space navies. Don't know much about the author, but I enjoyed the article: http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/04/SpaceNavies2.shtml...

Mr. Stross, Ok, so you don't like stories about "Napoleonic Space Navies". How about stories about the real thing? How do you like the "Horatio Hornblower" or "Master and Commander" series? Everyone remembers the movie staring Russel Crowe, but there...

Comment Threads

S Lawrence' murder: The local plod had been bought by the local gangsters (some/most of the plod were racists as well ...) Rotherham It looks as though local plod have also been completely bought by the local rapist & expolitative gangs. Lots of calls for councillors / crime commisioners etc to resign. Do we get calls for the cleansing of S Yorkshire plod? No. I wonder why that might be?...

Greg: common factor is that it's not just the headline-making instances. I'm thinking I should shut up for a while. We don't get the raving nut-jobs here, but I think we should give Charlie a chance to say yea or nay on the topics, particularly Rotherham. I've maybe already said too much in a reply to you in another thread. I don't want the topic to spread any more....

Please drop the Rotherham topic for now. 1. I have con crud and am too ill to blog effectively or moderate a civil discussion. 2. Never mind third-rail topics, Rotherham strays close to third, fourth, and fifth electrified rails: institutional police corruption, sexism, racism (the term "political correctness" is being bandied around as a dog whistle here) ... it's messy. 3. It's part of a much bigger picture -- the exploitation and sexual abuse of young women -- that's emerging society-wide. And I'm more interested in the big picture than this one particular sad and disgusting local scandal....

Charlie & Antonia Agree with both of you. It's disgusting & as Charlie says it appears (now) to be much more widespread than "we" previously thought. One last on this, then I'll drop it. Charlie's point #3 I think it isn't "just" the exploitation and sexual abuse of young women that is now emerging shows, perhaps a picture of complete corruption in & throughout our societies. The institutional police corruption is a symptom, not a cause. Yuk. Scary stuff....